Reviews and Recommendations

December 2009

12/28/2009

I was not aware of Carlin's Playing the Enemy until I saw Clint Eastwood's flim adaptation Invictus, which is based on Carlin's book. I was sufficiently impressed with the movie that I wanted to read the book and get the full story. Hollywood rarely does justice to books, and in some respects, Invictus is no exception. Even so, the book and movie are a powerful reminder of how sport can bring otherwise intractable enemies together in common cause and heal wounds.

As I suspected, Carlin's book is much more interesting than the movie, though his treatment of his main protagonists, Nelson Mandela and Francois Pienaar, is sometimes clinical and cold. Carlin, former U.S. bureau chief for the Independent, was assigned to South Africa during the transition from white to majority rule. He personally interviewed most of the principals involved in this fascinating story and undertook the project with Mandela’s blessing.

My primary interest in the book was Mandela, a master politician and incredible man. In this respect, Playing the Enemy does not disappoint. Carlin does a great job of chronicling the early challenges that Mandela faced leading up to and including his first years as President of post-apartheid South Africa. Turning black South African hearts to cheer for the Spingbok in the 1995 Rugby World Cup, the beloved rugby team of the Afrikaners, is a stunning example of his skills.

"GEN. CHARLES ANDRE JOSEPH MARIE DE GAULLE was probably the all-time master of the politics of intransigence. When he arrived in England in June 1940, a castaway from the military disaster that was engulfing the French, he was a virtually unknown brigadier urging revolt against a government headed by a marshal of France. Not one member of the French diplomatic staff in London answered his calls. Of the 2,000 French wounded who had been evacuated from Dunkirk, only 200 joined him. Robert Murphy, the political counselor of the United States Embassy in Paris, had never heard his name.

"Four years later, I watched him ride down the Champs Elysees in an open car with Winston Churchill, basking in the cheers of an adoring crowd. He was the unchallenged leader of France. How did he do it?

"The answer is contained in Charles de Gaulle,' a highly readable biography by the veteran correspondent Don Cook. This book does not rely on headline-making interviews or freshly mined archival material but rather on long firsthand experience. Currently Paris bureau chief of The Los Angeles Times, Mr. Cook has covered the European political beat for 38 years. Like William Shirer on Hitler's Germany or Robert Donovan on Harry Truman's Washington, he is a seasoned authority on De Gaulle's France.

"Mr. Cook paints a vivid picture of an egotistical loner who showed a positive genius for infuriating his British and American benefactors. He occupied the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon off Newfoundland against the express wishes of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He deliberately delayed his arrival at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 to upstage Roosevelt and Churchill. He torpedoed Gen. Henri Giraud, the President's handpicked choice to head up a new government in French North Africa. On the eve of D-day, he even held up the sailing of 170 French liaison officers assigned to the Allied invasion force. At that point, an exasperated Churchill briefly ordered de Gaulle shipped back to Algiers - ''in chains if necessary.''

"Yet de Gaulle usually got what he wanted in the end. His Free French forces played a respectable role in the final defeat of Germany. And he won a place for France at the peace table far beyond that earned by his troops on the battlefield.

"At times, as Mr. Cook points out, a little tact and diplomacy might have achieved the same results more quickly. Roosevelt, for instance, never accepted the general and took far longer to recognize de Gaulle's Free France than the French people did. But, generally speaking, the worse de Gaulle behaved, the more he seemed to get. It would be easy to write off his success as just another instance where the squeaking wheel gets the grease, but there's much more to it than that. De Gaulle was loudly self-centered even when no one else was vying for favors.

"Mr. Cook rightly devotes most of his book to World War II, but the rest of de Gaulle's life is by no means neglected, especially his extraordinary late political career. At the end of the war, political power eluded him, and most of the time during the 13 years of the unstable Fourth Republic - it had 19 prime ministers in 12 years - he was out of power and often out of the public eye. But he was a great presence in the minds and imaginations of many political and military leaders in the 50's, when France was defeated in Vietnam and Algeria broke into rebellion against French rule. And de Gaulle displayed great patience as he occasionally reminded the republic of his past as a national symbol.

"In July 1955, when he was 64, he told a Paris press conference, ''It is my intention not to intervene any longer in what is called 'public affairs.' . . . It may be that I would intervene again, but it would take a rather unusual shock for this.'' The shock came three years later, when the French Government collapsed under the pressure of the Algerian rebellion and the Fourth Republic, in desperation, handed him virtually dictatorial power for six months. In May 1958 the National Assembly voted him absolute control of the Government and then went on vacation until its next scheduled meeting in October. In fact, the Fourth Republic came to an end before that.

"Through it all, de Gaulle remained as intransigent as ever. No one could ever say he mellowed with age. As usual, the Anglo-Saxons got their full share of his scorn, but the rest of the world felt it too. He pulled out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, attacked the Common Market, turned against Israel and even lent support to the separatist movement in French Canada. Basically, Mr. Cook feels, de Gaulle was engaged in a calculated pursuit of power and that drive for power explains everything he did. But the evidence suggests the general's behavior sprang not so much from conscious tactics as from something in his personality. He always had to have his way - whether as a little boy playing soldiers, or a young major wearing his beret slanted differently from everyone else's, or as a senior officer whose theories on armored warfare were completely out of step with accepted French doctrine, or finally as an old man devising his own rules for winning at solitaire.

"The saving grace of this remarkable leader was his total, single-minded patriotism. He was selfish and ambitious - but for France, not himself. When things finally went against him in a national referendum in 1969, he did not seize dictatorial powers; he went home."

12/19/2009

Socrates’ life ended by his own hand following his trial for heresy.He was charged with corrupting the minds of his students.In truth, he was on trial for encouraging his students to challenge the accepted beliefs of the time and think for themselves.It was during the course of his trial that Socrates is reported to have uttered the oft quoted words: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

I consider myself a religious person.In matters of religion I have taken Socrates’ words to heart and made them my own.To paraphrase: I believe that “an unexamined religion is not worth living.”It is for this reason that I finally picked up a copy of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, Dawkins’ most famous (or infamous, depending upon your point of view) defense of Darwin’s theory of evolution and discourse on the myth of God, theology and religion.Dawkins is the best known face of the new radical atheism.If for no other reason than the controversy his work has stirred, The God Delusion is worth reading.

There is no question that Dawkins knows his subject.There is no question that he passionately believes what he says.There is no question that he is insufferably arrogant.Much of the first of The God Delusion is an explanation of why the “educated elite” do not now and never really have believed there is a God in Heaven.Among these Dawkins includes many of the great philosophers, founding fathers, intelligentsia, and, not surprisingly, himself.On my own wall hangs a number of diplomas, yet I remain a believer.Apparently, I am not among the elite.

Of course Dawkins’ insufferable arrogance does not in any way undermine the truth value of his evidence for the nonexistence of God.His arguments are well crafted and reasoned.For this reason they deserve serious consideration and reflection.Dawkins spends considerable time dismantling every conceivable basis upon which an individual and societies might stake a belief in any supernatural deity, including: Thomas Aquinas’ famous proofs for the existence of God, the arguments from scripture, personal experience and so forth.It is from here that Dawkins’ explains “why there almost certainly is no God.”Enter Mr. Darwin.

It is with Dawkins’ short shrift for the personal experience of God that I take issue.I am no scientist or student of the brain (with which Dawkins would no doubt agree) but I find it difficult to dismiss the personal experience of God as simply the mechanics or tricks of the human brain.What of God revealing himself to his children?Argue what you will about the philosophical proofs for God or the merits of Darwinism, I find it hard to dismiss the earnest beliefs of those who profess to have experienced His guidance and presence.I myself believe in a God that is real and personal and condescends to play an active role in human affairs and reveal himself to faithful men and women.

12/16/2009

Ever wondered where and from whom some of our most cherished Christmas carols came from? Read all about them here. Ron Clancy's Best Loved Christmas Carols is wonderfully packaged and illustrated, with a short history of each classic carol. A great warm up for Christmas and makes for a great gift too.

12/11/2009

In December 1999, TIME Magazine named Albert Einstein as its Person of the 20th Century.I was appalled.Genius?Absolutely.Expanded our horizons?Sure.Person of the Century?Hardly.My vote?Winston Churchill.

Peter W. Schramm (Executive Director of the John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs, Professor of Political Science at Ashland University and a former Reagan Administration official) put it best:

“He is the one who foresaw the Communist and then the Nazi menace and was able to see the nature of their loathsome ideologies. He is the one who so vigorously articulated the necessity of preparation, and the one who—almost alone—in May of 1940 stood up to those British leaders who had become persuaded that Germany would win and thereby were willing to cut a deal with Hitler. He is the one who then sent not only his battalions, but also the English language into battle (as John F. Kennedy put it). He is the one who told his countrymen that they would have 'victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road might be.' If there is any one man responsible for saving the best in our civilization in the twentieth-century, it is Winston Churchill.”

As is well known, Churchill was a master of language and possessed a razor sharp wit.Richard M. Langworth in The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill has put together some of the very best Churchill-isms known.Some of my favorites:

12/07/2009

I consider myself a bit more than just a casual reader.I read 70 to 80 books—upwards of 30,000 pages—a year.I read book reviews daily to stay current on new releases and read what others are saying is worth reading and what isn’t.Over time, I think I’ve developed a fairly adequate eye for a good book.Candidly though, most books that I read are just that—good.Not great, but good.Which is why when I read a great book, I get especially excited to share it with others.

Michael B. Sessions’ Stump: Fighting to Provide is a great book.In fact, not only is it easily the best book I have read in 2009, it is quite possibly one of the best books I have read in a very long time.Sessions has written an exemplary piece of historical fiction: interesting time period and setting, compelling story and characters, crisp dialogue, and emotive narrative.What makes his effort all the more remarkable is that Stump is Sessions’ first commercially published work (so far as I know).His talent speaks for itself.

I’m not inclined to relate the story of Stump here in any detail.It’s not my place to rob readers of the pleasure of experiencing a book on their own.But this much I will share: Stump is a fresh telling of a timeless tale—the hope and ardor of youth that is seemingly crushed by an unfortunate event only to be overcome by sheer determination and grit.It is a story of redemption.Perrigrine “PG” Sessions, son of Mormon pioneers who settled in Utah and, incidentally, the author’s grandfather, falls for the love of his life and once married relocates to Southeast Idaho to take a chance on hardscrabble land outside the sleepy town of Rigby.In Rigby, an ill-advised attempt to put food on his family’s table costs PG his left hand, hence the title of the book.Left without means to adequately farm his homestead, PG takes up menial work during the course of which a chance altercation prompts PG to undertake the most improbable means of providing for his family.Every step of the way, PG learns something about himself, his family, and his beliefs.